Nikola Gruevski

Maceodnia's Appeals Court on Friday confirmed former prime minister Nikola Gruevski's two-year jail sentence.

Macedonia's ex-Prime Minister and former ruling VMRO DPMNE party leader Nikola Gruevski is involved in a legal race against time that will determine whether he will serve his two-year jail sentence which was handed down in a first-instance verdict in May, or not have to serve any jail time because the statute of limitations has passed.

The Skopje court on Friday continued to hear more of over 1,000 previously unreleased wiretapped audio recordings of senior ex-officials as evidence in the case against former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and some of his former ministers and close associates who are accused of rigging past elections.

More than 1,000 previously unreleased wiretapped audio recordings are expected to be heard on Friday and next week at the ongoing trial of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and other former government officials who are charged with allegedly masterminding electoral fraud in 2013.

Implementing the agreement with Greece is a condition for its accession to the EU and NATO.

In his public address after Monday's parlays, Macedonian Prime Minister and main ruling Social Democrats leader Zoran Zaev accused the opposition right-wing VMRO DPMNE chief Hristijan Mickovski of "lying" that he wants his country to join NATO and the EU, and of hiding his true intentions at the talks.

Skopje Criminal Court on Friday found the businessmen Sead Kocan and one other guilty of falsifying documents in 2011 to win a 17-million-euros tender to extract coal from the Suvodol mine near the town of Bitola for the state power company, ELEM.

The tender was awarded to his consortium in 2012.

The agreement between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia should be endorsed by the two countries' respective societies for several reasons.

The ex-prime minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Nikola Gruevski, has dismissed the name deal reached by Athens and Skopje as "much worse" than the one his government rejected in 2009.

Huge statues erected in recent years in the Macedonian capital of the ancient warrior kings Alexander the Great and Filip of Macedon - as well as that of Alexander's mother, Olympia - will be officially renamed and marked in honour of Greek-Macedonian friendship, the Macedonian government has announced.